Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
A couple of weeks ago I shared my and my family’s Holocaust experience with a group of high school students in the Helena Rubinstein Auditorium of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I caught myself using the adjective “lucky” one too many times.
My wife keeps complaining that we have too much food in our oversized refrigerator (26 cubic feet) and in the freezer in the basement. As in most cases, she is right. After coming home from food shopping it’s like solving a 3D puzzle when we try to store the new grocery items.
As long as the Jewish spirit is yearning deep in the heart, With eyes turned toward the East, looking toward Zion, Then our hope—the two-thousand-year-old hope—will not be lost: To be a free people in our land, The land of Zion and Jerusalem. “Hatikvah” (National Anthem of Israel)
Headlines from the American media in April 2018 after a Holocaust-related survey was published: “Holocaust study: Two-thirds of millennials don’t know what Auschwitz is” (Washington Post, April 12, 2018) “4 in 10 millennials don’t know 6 million Jews were killed in Holocaust, study shows” (CBS News, April 12, 2018) “Holocaust Is Fading From Memory, Survey Finds” (New York Times, April 12, 2018) “The Startling Statistics About People’s Holocaust Knowledge” (NPR, April 14, 2018) “Why We’re Forgetting the Holocaust” (New York Post, April 15, 2018) “Study Shows Americans are Forgetting about the Holocaust” (NBC News, April 12, 2018)
On May 5, 2019, I was one of two speakers at a Yom Hashoah commemoration in Denver, Colorado. The gathering could not have been more timely. When I saw the printed program for the first time the day before, I was glad to see that someone had titled my presentation, “Surviving Mass Genocide. Anti-Semitism; History Repeating Itself.” Great title, although I thought I might have put a question mark at the end, as I was not ready to make such an affirmative statement. I would have raised it as a question: “Is History Repeating Itself?”
“Are you crazy?” was the most frequently heard question by my parents from those who learned that my mother was pregnant with me. Under normal circumstances, no one should pose this question when a new child is about to be born. But, those were not normal circumstances, and neither was the time nor the place. The time was fall 1940; the place was Budapest, Hungary; and my parents were Jewish. In defense of those who questioned the sanity of my parents, here are some reasons why this question was not completely out of place.
My mother came from a very observant Orthodox Jewish family. Her grandfather was an Orthodox rabbi in a small town in Austria-Hungary (today Prešov, Slovakia). Her father graduated from a yeshiva in Pressburg (today Bratislava, Slovakia), but he never became a rabbi. Her family kept kosher—meaning they observed the very strict Jewish dietary laws—and she had a strong Jewish education.
How can you say “thank you” to someone who gave you the most precious thing anyone can have: your own life? And, what if you never had a chance to get to know him? This is a question I face a few times every year, when our Jewish traditions compel us to remember those loved ones who are not with us anymore.
Recently I heard someone saying that the Holocaust Museum, among many other things, is a grave for those who do not have a grave. I could immediately identify with the sentiment, because my father does not have a known grave that I am obliged to visit on his yahrzeit, the anniversary of a parent’s death in Jewish custom. As a matter of fact, we cannot even observe a proper yahrzeit because we do not know the date of his death.
After my mother was miraculously released from the infamous Mosonyi Street Detention Center, we could no longer stay with our host family, whose apartment was not in a building that was assigned to Jews and marked with a yellow Star of David. We could not afford to have another “good neighbor” denounce us again to the police.
Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.